Further complicating this is that in 1st edition Base set, gold was (arguably) the best card in the game. I'm guessing a lot of people didn't challenge that assumption and always go for gold, and try to play as many gold as possible. Gold does have it's place in today's game too. When it's not possible to build a treasureless deck, gold will provide economy. I think in some situations, having access to the treasure cards drastically speeds up the game. Gold and silver a re a fail safe that can keep a boring kingdom from being a boring and painfully slow kingdom. Keeping the game fun for as many people as possible is the goal, not making the best things for a 2 player game.
And even then, its replacement, Bandit ("Thief 2.0") STILL gives you a Gold, perpetuating that ideal.
I guess I feel like, in terms of testing cards, what's the difference between 2 players and 3+ players? Well, if a card is great in multiples, then you'll want to be sure it's not crazy if you can get 6 copies of it, like you might in a 2-player game. I think the only cards in Nocturne that fit the bill are Idol and Werewolf, though you could make an argument for Vampire. Idol is admittedly way stronger than my group thought it was, though I don't think it's too strong. And we actually discovered that it was strong after Nocturne testing was over when a new player joined our games and went for a heavy-Idol strategy. So we got to see that play out despite it not being a 2-player game.
That's interesting because I just assumed that there would be someone on the play testing team who would run a "test case" like "spam all the cards" on a card-by-card basis. OTOH, you folks also have a lot of other use cases to get through, so I digress.
Basically, if there's a rush for something, it can disappear a lot quicker than you think!...
The only village
The only +Buys (although unlike the branch actions, you may not need as many of these)
Heavy Attack board, but Lighthouse is the only defense
Arms race to fling out curses, so rush for the Cursers
This also has the side effect of causing the game to end earlier than think...
1) One case, Ill-Gotten Gains and another card were the group's "faves" in a 4p game. Well, IGG also empties the Curses in sync, and as that other card was emptying, it hit us that yeah, if you haven't greened up, NOW's the time!
2) In a BSW 3p game when it was just base game...
We had a rush on 3 piles. We've managed to trash our starting Estates, but when it was down to 1 pile left, *I* had an "epiphany" where I'd better get more points, and so did that other player! I played a Festival and managed to buy an Estate and Duchy. Before me, one other player managed to buy 2 Estates. The end score was me: 4, that player: 2, and p3: 0!